
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, July 1, 1995                   TAG: 9507030061
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

GERMANY TO SEND 1ST WARPLANES

After a raucous debate, parliament voted Friday to order fighter jets to fly cover for rapid reaction troops in Bosnia, a role that could be Germany's first combat mission since World War II.

The decision, a significant shift in foreign policy, grew out of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's conviction that Germany cannot keep using its Nazi past as a pretext for not helping its allies.

``Our friends and allies must know that the federal government does not give mere lip service to Germany's larger responsibilities since reunification,'' Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said.

Parliament voted 386-258 to send eight ECR-Tornado jets and 1,000 troops and support staff to Italy, and 500 medics to Croatia to set up a field hospital.

Many Germans favor humanitarian involvement in Bosnia because of the daily television footage of suffering there, but are opposed to sending the fighter jets.

Serbs harshly condemned the move.

``Their arrival will be tantamount to a military occupation,'' Bosnian Serb TV said, recalling the harsh Nazi invasion of the Balkans. ``It wouldn't be a surprise if today ... marks the spillover of the war into a wider region.''

``Sending German soldiers is like putting out a fire with petrol,'' it added.

- Associated Press

by CNB